 the phrase "mama grizzly" creeps me out
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So we're in the kitchen Norma and me and she's giggling about being a "mama grizzly" and I'm feeling one of those unfunny reactions where I know it's not about her and it's not about what we're talking about and it's not about my value system but more about something that must have happened in second grade, as I have this whole map of somatic reactions when it's not strictly emotional and not wholly aesthetic and not intellectual or political but some animal reaction related to one childhood trauma or another which most lucky people have forgotten or digested but with me they're all still fresh as bruises on a strawberry. And I happen to carry the private-until-now belief that way too much of what we call political discourse is really about mommy and scared of the dark and peeing in your pants and getting spanked or not getting spanked and wanting daddy's approval. So I interrogate my reaction to the phrase mama grizzly, mama grizzly ... and what is going on with Sarah Palin's skirt, and why am I imagining her as a second-grade teacher, and what does that have to do with the fascist impulse and the authoritarian woman and I realize it's ...
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Sexy Christian Authoritarian Southern Female Elementary School Teachers who Paddle and Slap and quote the Bible
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against which any political differences pale in comparison ... she is indeed the grizzly and I am the boy alone in the cabin with maybe a shotgun and maybe not a shotgun, who knows. There is the fascist drama right there, that it's the law of the jungle and the rule of law is an effete coastal notion we prissy boys use to shield us from the mean girls, and then I wonder if like all primal forces this one has its face and its shadow and I'm just responding to its shadow while in the hearts of Americans she lives in glory as a welcome fascist dream in drag. I wonder if she isn't in fact the longed-for dream of the authoritarian woman's completion of the authoritarian man's global desire, and I recall with some reluctance the sexual charge of the second-grade Bible-toting wool-skirt-wearing pretty sweet-smelling elementary-school teacher who held the promise of warmth and femininity to a boy whose own mother was cold and intellectual and volatile ... and ... wow, we're in trouble now because her husband shows up with
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more lethal than a shotgun, he the husband/father/son of this lethal Christian goddess, the Levi jeans half of the wool skirted trauma, the simple man who loves the authoritarian somewhat ditzy-sounding common woman with uncommon maybe genius-order emotional intelligence with slight lapses of judgment and easily tripped up by clever coastal elitists with their secular agendas because she's just a simple small-town girl with a simple but strong small-town Christian husband ... and these were the people of my simple small-town nightmares in the simple small-town South of my not-so-simple small-town boyhood
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plus i caught a terrible cold
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and I wish I could blame that on Sarah Palin but it's a more fitting tribute to the genius of germs to punch through marvelous defenses, as when, distracted by politics, the boxer leaves himself open and goes down, which reminds me I'm
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still pretty much a hacking, stumbling, trembling, feverish wreck
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and must therefore bid you adieu, except to say that I will write again soon and as always I do regret the long intervals of silence punctuated by surprise late-night appearances in the rain at your door amid lightning, dripping on your porch, of which cause for concern I am not unmindful only to reiterate that I am indeed of most resilient constitution and the rain-soaked poodle is barking at me now with her regal and annoyed certainty as if she held in her paws the papers that prove she legally owns me which she does in practice if not in law ...
and also and finally to say that I am thinking of you and it's just a common cold, nothing more, for which there is no cure but neither any worry.
Adieu!
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